This study analyses how the Syrian refugee inflows into turkey affected firm entry and performance. To estimate the casual effects, instrumental variables, difference-indifferences and synthetic control methodologies are used.
... Exibir mais + The results suggest that hosting refugees is favourable for firms. Total firm entry does not seem to be significantly affected. However, there is a substantial increase in the number of new foreign-owned firms. In line with the increase in new foreign-owned firms, there is some indication of growth in gross profits and net sales.
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This paper introduces a new Job Quality Index that measures the quality of jobs in Turkey over the last decade. While the main focus is on wage employment – which in 2016 accounts for nearly 73 percent of all workers – the paper also discusses job quality of the self-employed and unpaid family workers.
... Exibir mais + Based on a comprehensive definition of what constitutes a good job, the index consists of 6 dimensions covering aspects such as adherence to Labor Law regulations, working conditions, adequate linkage between wage and job, productive usage and adaptability of skills, career opportunities and employment resilience. The quality of wage employment improved at the aggregate level from 2009 until 2016; with sharper improvements in job quality between 2009 and 2012. Improvements are largely the result of compositional changes toward more formal sector wage jobs; yet the distribution of job quality remains widespread, across economic sectors, occupational categories and geographic locations. The paper delves deep into each dimension of a good job and highlights the main drivers of good (and bad) jobs in Turkey and identifies the types of reforms that are needed to enable workers to benefit from increasing growth while adapting to changing labor market conditions. Lastly, the findings from this paper show that by measuring job quality policymakers can identify what jobs should be incentivized to ensure that job growth is accompanied by job quality.
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This note examines job multiplier effects to help guide policy makers in the design of future incentive schemes targeted at boosting employment by using a methodology from Moretti (2010) and Moretti and Thulin (2013).
... Exibir mais + The job multiplier measures the indirect impact of a positive employment shock in the tradable sector is expected to be positive, thanks to an overall increase in the demand for services. It could also lead to higher wages if there are labor supply constraints. The note also compares the impact of the shock in Turkey with that observed in Sweden and the United States. In addition, it examines the differences in the job multiplier. effect when a tradable sector job created is in a higher value added sector versus a lower value added sector.
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This note examines job multiplier effects to help guide policy makers in the design of future incentive schemes targeted at boosting employment by using a methodology from Moretti (2010) and Moretti and Thulin (2013).
... Exibir mais + The job multiplier measures the indirect impact of a positive employment shock in the tradable sector is expected to be positive, thanks to an overall increase in the demand for services. It could also lead to higher wages if there are labor supply constraints. The note also compares the impact of the shock in Turkey with that observed in Sweden and the United States. In addition, it examines the differences in the job multiplier. effect when a tradable sector job created is in a higher value added sector versus a lower value added sector.
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Doing Business 2018 is the 15th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
... Exibir mais + This economy profile presents the Doing Business indicators for Turkey. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies; for 2018 Turkey ranks 60. Doing Business measures aspects of regulation affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking. Data in Doing Business 2018 are current as of June 1, 2017. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why.
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Energy efficiency in industry is a crucial topic for Turkey, as the country has an import dependency of 80 percent in energy. Although the importance of enhancing energy efficiency in industry is widely acknowledged, there has not been any study examining the energy efficiency in Turkish industry at micro level.
... Exibir mais + Employing a sound decomposition methodology on a firm-level data set of manufacturing firms, this paper documents that there was a significant decrease in the energy intensity of firms over 2005-12. In contrast, structural change across manufacturing sectors and across firms within sectors had positive but limited effects on the overall energy efficiency over the period.
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In September 2015, the 2030 agenda for sustainable development was adopted by member states of the United Nations (UN) at an historic UN summit.
... Exibir mais + Sustainable consumption and production (SCP), as specifically reflected by SD goal (SDG) 12, is among the most important SDGs in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. The Government of Turkey (GoT) is dedicated to taking action for the successful implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, it welcomes the universal and integrated nature of SDGs. The World Bank (WB) and other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) are committed to helping national governments integrate their development agendas with the SDGs and supporting the design and use of economic instruments to ensure their effective implementation. The purpose of this report is to review Turkey’s on-going efforts as well as international experience in implementing economic instruments to support SCP as specified in SDG 12, analyze the gaps, and discuss areas where Turkey may better adopt economic instruments and other incentive policies for promoting SCP in the new national development plan (NDP). The study contains six chapters. Chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two provides an overview of Turkey’s involvement in the global sustainable development agenda, a summary of SDG12 and key themes of SCP. Chapter three introduces the conceptual framework on green financing, and summarizes international experience on the use of economic instruments with a focus on SCP. Chapter four explores the Turkish context of economic instruments to support SCP and reviews existing economic policies and instruments. Areas for improvement and recommendations are presented in chapter five. Chapter six provides concluding remarks.
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The seven largest emerging market economies -- China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey -- constituted more than one-quarter of global output and more than half of global output growth during 2010-15.
... Exibir mais + These emerging markets, called EM7, are also closely integrated with other countries, especially with other emerging and frontier markets. Given their size and integration, growth in EM7 could have significant cross-border spillovers. The authors provide empirical estimates of these spillovers using a Bayesian vector autoregression model. They report three main results. First, spillovers from EM7 are sizeable: a 1 percentage point increase in EM7 growth is associated with a 0.9 percentage point increase in growth in other emerging and frontier markets and a 0.6 percentage point increase in world growth at the end of three years. Second, sizeable as they are, spillovers from EM7 are still smaller than those from G7 countries (Group of Seven of advanced economies). Specifically, growth in other emerging and frontier markets, and the global economy would increase by one-half to three times more due to a similarly sized increase in G7 growth. Third, among the EM7, spillovers from China are the largest and permeate globally.
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This paper is part of an ongoing collaboration between the World Bank and the General Directorate of Forestry (GDF) in Turkey. In 2013, the GDF requested that the World Bank help update their 5-year Forest Sector Strategy (2017-2021), and together they developed a Forest Policy Note (FPN) which provided a comprehensive overview of the Forestry Sector; an in-depth analysis identifying areas in which the sector could adopt international best practices in sustainable forestry management.
... Exibir mais + As part of that analysis, this PROFOR-funded survey was undertaken to better understand the socioeconomic dimensions of forest villages, their forest dependency, and constraints to income growth in rural areas. The survey collected important information on the socio-economic conditions of forest village populations, income generating opportunities, forest use and management practices, migration and activities of forest development programs and cooperatives. The analysis highlights the main challenges to improving villager livelihoods and forest management and provides much needed evidence for informing the design and implementation of forest community development programs.
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This Forest Policy Note, prepared by the World Bank, offers an outside view of the Turkish Forestry Sector, provides some strategic guidance to help define sector goals, and identifies opportunities for consideration in the continued development of the sector and for the implementation of the Turkish/World Bank Country Partnership Strategy which recognizes that the sustainable management of natural resources and nature protection are growing in importance as long-term challenges, along with climate change adaptation.
... Exibir mais + The note aims to offer guidance on how the forest resource can continue to provide environmental goods and services while supporting both forest villages and the wood processing sector in a sustainable and cost efficient manner into the future. Turkey's natural resources face increasing pressures from growth in energy use, industry, transport, tourism, and agriculture resulting in water stress, soil erosion and pollution. Turkey is already addressing a range of regulatory and institutional reforms in the environment and forestry sectors and prioritizing investment programs in infrastructure, pollution mitigation, and afforestation. Measures to address these challenges are now becoming a priority for the Government. This Forest Policy Note (FPN) builds on previous work within the forestry sector. It aims to inform the World Bank project formulation process and the forestry sector by reviewing the sector and highlighting the main policy issues and identifying possible actions. This study will assist in identifying and designing investment opportunities within the sector. It is not a forest policy per se, although it could serve as an input to a forest policy formulation process.
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The World Bank Group’s engagement in Turkey’s power sector, which began in the 1990s and continues today, has helped to expand independent power production and privatize electricity distribution in the country.
... Exibir mais + Significant investments made in both generation and distribution shifted the power sector toward private investment and management while meeting growing energy needs.
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The Turkish statistical institute (TURKSTAT) has gone through a major revision of its national accounts system. TURKSTAT has undertaken a number of changes simultaneously to align its methodology with the European system of accounts (ESA 2010), improve estimation methods and strengthen information infrastructure.
... Exibir mais + These changes led to substantial revisions in national accounts data, triggering an open debate about the methodology and data. The aim of this focus note is to shed light on this multidimensional revision.
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The Turkish statistical institute (TURKSTAT) has gone through a major revision of its national accounts system. TURKSTAT has undertaken a number of changes simultaneously to align its methodology with the European system of accounts (ESA 2010), improve estimation methods and strengthen information infrastructure.
... Exibir mais + These changes led to substantial revisions in national accounts data, triggering an open debate about the methodology and data. The aim of this focus note is to shed light on this multidimensional revision.
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Turkey’s economy shrank in third quarter amid temporary political turmoil and falling tourism revenues. The contractions on the expenditure side were mirrored by declines on the production side.
... Exibir mais + We revise our growth forecast to 2.1 percent for 2016 because recovery in fourth quarter was weaker than envisaged earlier. Inflation surged by 1.5 pps to 8.5 percent in December. The current account deficit widened in fourth due to worsening services balance. Portfolio outflows from the bond market accelerated in fourth quarter due to domestic and external factors. The banking sector roll-over rate has fallen since June.The rapid Lira depreciation and its likely impact on inflation is leading the Central Bank to increase interest rates. Fiscal policy is providing considerable stimulus to growth. Growth is expected to recover to 2.7 percent in 2017 thanks to improving net exports.This is likely to constrain domestic demand in the near future but have positive effects in the medium-term. Moreover, falling banking sector roll-over rates may limit credit growth.
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Turkey’s economy shrank in third quarter amid temporary political turmoil and falling tourism revenues. The contractions on the expenditure side were mirrored by declines on the production side.
... Exibir mais + We revise our growth forecast to 2.1 percent for 2016 because recovery in fourth quarter was weaker than envisaged earlier. Inflation surged by 1.5 pps to 8.5 percent in December. The current account deficit widened in fourth due to worsening services balance. Portfolio outflows from the bond market accelerated in fourth quarter due to domestic and external factors. The banking sector roll-over rate has fallen since June.The rapid Lira depreciation and its likely impact on inflation is leading the Central Bank to increase interest rates. Fiscal policy is providing considerable stimulus to growth. Growth is expected to recover to 2.7 percent in 2017 thanks to improving net exports.This is likely to constrain domestic demand in the near future but have positive effects in the medium-term. Moreover, falling banking sector roll-over rates may limit credit growth.
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For the last 50 years, the Turkish Cypriot community (TCc) has remained outside the effective control of the government of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC).
... Exibir mais + The community displays typical characteristics and challenges of a small island economy, and after years of rapid growth and income convergence, it is unlikely to replicate its pre-2009 economic performance in the medium term. Sound macroeconomic policies and structural reforms, thus, become all the more crucial if the community is to regain the growth momentum of the early-2000s and address some of the labor market issues. Structural reforms should, among other things, aim to remove barriers to an expanding private sector, and strengthen domestic and external market competitiveness. To do this, the Turkish Cypriot community needs to better align its workforce and Workforce Development (WfD) policies to the needs of the labor market and of the private sector in particular.This study aims to assess the TCc’s overall WfD system. Where shortcomings are identified, the study offers suggestions on how to improve the quality and relevance of the skills produced by the community’s workforce system, including Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) at the secondary and postsecondary level, and on-the-job learning. This report presents a comprehensive diagnostic of a WfD system’s policies and institutions.
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The objective of this review is to analyze the current status on achievement of targeted benefits from distribution privatization and identify the gaps between expectations and realizations, with a key task of proposing concrete procedures and methodologies to ensure that EMRA and other government agencies involved in monitoring and enforcing quality in electricity distribution and retail have timely access to reliable information on service actually provided by the DISCOMs to their customers.
... Exibir mais + To reach these objectives, this report follows the following approach: section one presents an overview of the distribution sector and distribution privatization process; section two analyzes the existing regulatory framework related to DISCOM performance and provides expected performance targets in respective investment periods; section three analyzes the current status of DISCOMs’ performance targets; section four identifies key issues and barriers in measuring and monitoring service quality in DISCOMs; and lastly, based on the global experience, section five recommends an approach for improving measuring and monitoring of service quality by the regulator.
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This paper assesses two research questions: has the presence of foreign firms contributed to productivity increases in Turkey, and how could Turkey increase foreign direct investment inflows?
... Exibir mais + First, the analysis applies dynamic regressions in differences over an AMADEUS firm-level data set. Similar to the results for other emerging countries, Turkish firms that received foreign direct investment will see an increase in productivity after the fourth year. The paper finds evidence of negative but small competition spillovers over domestic firms in the same sector of the multinational, as well as positive and large knowledge spillovers to domestic firms in broader two-digit sectors. This finding constitutes a case for foreign direct investment attraction policies in Turkey. Second, based on the findings of the cross-country regressions, the paper argues that Turkey could increase its attractiveness to foreign investors by strengthening institutional quality, in particular the rule of law, and mitigating exchange rate volatility.
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Turkey’s performance in 2015 suffered a significant decline, returning to the 2006 level. The performance gap between students from the top and bottom income groups is equivalent to more than two years of schooling.
... Exibir mais + Urban students outperform rural students by the equivalent of nearly 1.5 years of schooling. The report presents graphical data on scores over time; science trends; student performance; equity profile; and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) performance and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
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Public financing of child care can allow for more equitable access to these services in places where public provision and capacity are low. However, the mechanisms of subsidy delivery will affect who benefits, and the overall cost effectiveness of such subsidies.
... Exibir mais + This paper sets out an ex ante simulation model for estimating the benefit incidence of expanded capacity and enrollments resulting from different child care subsidy mechanisms. It uses a supply-side provider level and a demand-side household model, and combines the two models. The paper considers investment grants to providers, operational monthly grants to child care providers, combinations of the investment and operational grants, and demand-side vouchers to households. The model is applied to empirical data from child care centers and households in Turkey. The results reveal that the choice of the subsidy delivery model has a strong bearing on the benefit incidence and cost effectiveness of the subsidy. In the case of Turkey, where significant supply-side constraints exist in the market, a demand-side voucher system is shown to be the least cost-effective subsidy delivery model. A targeted demand-side voucher does not necessarily deliver the most "pro-poor results," and combinations show different benefits and costs. The proposed simulation model can be applied in other country contexts, with the only data requirements being micro data on the costs and pricing structure of child care providers, as well as household data with variables on household welfare and child care utilization.
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